News from the HSG

2017

16 January

After press releases in both Swedish, Engluish and Spanish, the paper about the barley in the Canary Islands has recieved quite som attention online. You can find links to some of these here.

2016

19 December

We recieved a nice early Christmas present in the form of having our paper about barley in the Canary Islands accepted for publication in Journal of Archaeological Science. It has now been prepublished and you can find it here. The photo is taken by Ernesto Martin and shows the Granary of Acusa-El Alamo (near Cueva las Estrellas).

8 November

Essi and Jenny gave a joint presentation about hops at Östergötlands Naturalieförening. A keen audience was very active, asked lots of questions and made for a nice evening.

28 October

Tytti has been to Linköping for a week and given us good help with PCR and sequencing of two HvNAM genes. With a little bit of luck we can finish of the lab part of that project soon and start on the analysis and writing of a manuscript.

25 October

Jenny has participated at Popular Science Week with a presentation about barley in the Canary islands. The presentation was given twice, both times to an almost full lecture theatre.

12 October

Eighth grader Linus has spent a couple of days with the HSG. He has given us invaluable help by sorting some of the many seed samples we have stored in various boxes.

6 October

Jenny has participated in Vetenskapsdagarna at Linköping University and presented the HSG reserach about extreme agriculture to some 50 interested biology teachers.

19 September

Maria have participated in the ISBA meeting and met up with former HSG member Hugo Oliveira.

29 August

15 August

The pea flowering time paper is now available at BMC Genetics. You will find it here.

4 August

Nice things have happend over the summer and now the pea flowering time paper authored by Jenny, Matti and Maria in collaboration with Tytti, Jim Weller at University of Tasmania and Jenny's former Master student Kjersti Normann has been accepted for publication in BMC Genetics. We are very happy to see this paper come to a good home after working on it for so long.

17 June

Frida Östensson, continuing on the work of Sara and Sandra from last year, has now finished her thesis project with us and her report has been formally approved by the examinator. You can read it here.

4 April

Why should you save on museum collections? For one thing you could do the type of research the Historic Seed Group does... Hear more about it here (in Swedish).

4 March

Find out more about some of the barley seed samples we have studied, the ones from Skibotn, by reading here.

20 January

15 January

Maria and Jenny have been to Lund and participated in the Evolution in Sweden meeting. Jenny presented a talk and Maria a poster. We both listened to many interesting presentations, talked to old friends and made new acquaintances.

12 January

A good start to the new year! At long last the rye paper describing Hugo's postdoc work while with us has been accepted for publication. The paper, with Jenny, Matti and Nils as coauthors, will soon be published in BMC Pland Biology. Watch this space.

2015

20 November

Jenny has participated in a workshop in Stockholm about the conservation of crop wild relatives where she presented some of the Historic Seed Group's research findings.

9 November

The paper with Selçuk, Nils, Jenny and Matti as authors describing genetic variants for local adaptation in historical barley is now fully published and can be found here.

2 November

Jenny, Essi and Matti together with Svein Solberg from NordGen and Erik de Vahl from Alnarp all met up in Linköping for a day of potato onion discussions ranging from conservation issues to publication planning.

16 October

Matti has been to a meeting of Kålrotsakademien (the Swede academy). Hear Matti talk about the history of swede and some of his favourite swedes here (in Swedish).

7 September

A pea paper Matti has coauthored, Diversity in local cultivars of Pisum sativum collected from home gardens in Sweden, has been accepted for publication in Biochemical Systematics and Ecology.

28 August

Essi is publishing a new book, Humle. Det gröna guldet, (Hops. The green gold) and the Swedish Museum of Cultural History opens an exhibition on hops. Both are being launched on Monday the 24th. Read more about it here.

18 August

Maria has been visiting the Östergötland Museum and sample old seed bags with pharaoic emmer wheat. We are very excited to see what results genotyping them will yield.

12 August

The paper with Selçuk, Nils, Jenny and Matti as authors describing genetic variants for local adaptation in historical barley is now available here (under Plant Genetic Resources (C-8)). The paper presents the results of Selçuk's thesis work and some additional work that Nils carried out during his time as a PhD student.

During the summer a lot of genotyping results have arrived and we are looking forward to analysing those during the autumn.

Nils is soon bound for Umeå where he will work with statistical models of wood properties and the mechanisms of wood formation with Rosario Garcia Gil. We wish him the best of luck with his new position.

23 June

Both bachelor students, Sandra and Sara, have now had their theses approved and they can call themselves Bachelor of Science. You can find Sandra's and Sara's theses here. We wish them all the best with their future endeavours.

9 June

Past and present members of the Historic Seed Group have had their yearly get-together. This time we met up at Swedish Museum of Cultural History in Stockholm for talks, good food and a quick look at the sugar exhibition. Joining us this year were Carolin Johansson from the Mediterranean Museum, Anneleen Kool from the Natural History Museum at University of Oslo and Mia Lempiäinen-Avci from University of Turku. Jenny's and Matti's bachelor students Sandra and Sara also joined us and presented their thesis work.

22 April

Matti has been talking at Kålrotsakademien, the Swede Academy, and he has now been elected a member of the academy.

7 April

The two bachelor students Sandra Lilja and Sara Ödling are doing their degree projects with us this year. They have now had their introduction to labwork and will soon begin their work with the NAM genes in barley.

23 March

Nils and Jenny went to Trondheim for Nils dissertation where he successfully held his trial lecture and defended his thesis to Professor Åsmund Björnstad and Associate Professor Sofia Kolm Berlin.

4 February

Maria braved the winter weather and went to visit the Vänersborgs museum to sample some old seeds there. They will make exciting research material for Maria's PhD project.

30 January

Matti has visited the Götherström lab in Stockholm and presented our barley results from northern and southern Europe and talked about possible collaborations.

27 January

Matti, Maria, Nils and Per met up in Stockholm, visited the sugar exhibition and celebrated the submission of Nils' PhD thesis by eating large quantities of "palt".

19 January

The photo Jenny took of the Tromsø seed collection made the cover of the February issue of Heredity. The paper is now freely available. You can find it here

8 January

Matti and Per have published their paper about stealing turnips in Fataburen.

2014

4 December

Jenny and Essi were both invited to talk at the seminar day about hops cultivation at Vreta Kluster. We got to meet lots of people interested in hops and our research and the copies of the hops paper Jenny had brought along disappeared in no time.

27 November

Jenny and Matti are fresh back from the Canary Islands. We have met with our collaborators at Universidad de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria and visited CCBAT, the genebank at Tenerife. We have also been guided in the botanical garden on Tenerife, and visited numerous remains from the indigenous Canarians: habitation cave, grain storage caves and old threshing sites. A big thank you to Kungliga Vitterhetsakademien who made this possible.

7 November

Maria has just returned from a research visit to the Allaby lab where she has extracted DNA from archaeological barley, wheat, rye and brassica samples. DNA measures for several samples look very interesting, so we are very much looking forward to the next step.

27 October

Matti and Jenny have had a paper about potato onions published in Bulletin för trädgårdshistorisk forskning. You can find the Bulletin here.

22 October

Maria is now in Warwick visiting Robin Allaby's lab to learn how to best do DNA extraction from archaeological remains. All fingers crossed for Maria to come home with lots of quality DNA.

13 October

Maria has had a guided tour of the archaeological excavations of the parking lot Eddan in Linköping where past town dwellers had their kitchen gardens. Maria's co-supervisor Jens Heimdahl is here showing how the archaeobotanical material is treated at the excavation.

7 October

Jenny has been interviewed by Heredity for their podcast. If you want to hear the interview you can find it here.

6 October

The hops paper is now in print in Economic Botany. You can find it here.

23 September

Matti and Jenny are very grateful to Vitterhetsakademien who have kindly granted their applications for funding to go visit our collaborators at Universidad de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria and discuss our collaborative project on guanche barley.

17 September

Our barley paper published in Heredity is now available online. It can be accessed from here.

1 September

Our press release about our hops research has generated a good deal of interest on My Newsdesk. It had 448 visitors during August compared to 15 for the second most visited.

28 August

Matti has been to the ISBA meeting in Basel and gave a short talk on our phylogenetic work with different materials.

26 August

Jenny has participated in the GENECO summer meeting in Klippan in southern Sweden where she presented some of our wheat research. It was a nice meeting that gave interesting new ideas on presentation technique and research approaches.

21 August

Ida Gustafson has fortunately agreed to do some hours of work for us and help us with the Canary barley - sowing, harvesting and DNA extractions.

17 August

We are very happy to report that Nils has had his first paper accepted for publication in Heredity. It is a study of historical barley in Fennoscandia carried out together with Matti, Jenny and Joanne Russell and Malcolm Macaulay at the James Hutton Institute.

5 August

Matti and Essi, together with Agneta Börjeson, have published a paper in Sveriges utsädesförenings tidskrift.

28 July

25 June

Karin and Malin have now finished their degree project. You can find their reports here (in Swedish). We wish them both the best of luck for the future.

17 June

The Historic Seed Group has had a small spring meeting in Röttle. We had many short but interesting presentations of completed work and work in progress, a pleasant guided tour around Röttle and a buffet lunch including grey pea in many shapes. A rhubarb pie in the sun was a perfect finish to the day. Thank you to all past and present members and supporters who joined us. More photos from the day can be found here.

12 June

4 June

Both our bachelor project students Karin and Malin did a great job presenting their results to their fellow students. Their presentations generated a lot of attention and they got many interested questions concerning their work. Now they only need to put the finishing touches to their written reports before they can fully enjoy their well-earned summer breaks.

28 May

Congratulations to Linnéa who successfully defended her thesis and is now Dr Asplund. Well done and best of luck in the future.

26 May

We are pleased to not that our paper on Mediterranean wheat is among the most accessed papers at BMC Genetics in the past month. You can see its ranking and access the paper here.

8 May

Matti and Maria have visited the Museum of World Culture in Stockholm to sample a unique collection of ancient Egyptian cereals. We are also happy to report that the wheat paper coauthored by Jenny, Matti, Hugo and some of Hugo's previous colleagues is now accepted for publication in BMC Genetics. It can be found here.

2 May

Our two bachelor students, Karin and Malin, have now finished their work in the lab. They are still waiting for the results of the samples sent away for sequencing and then they will write up their results in a report each. Malin ran her pyrosequencing last Wednesday with clear, but unfortunately pretty boring, results.

28 April

We are very happy to report that the paper about hops, Genetic diversity in remnant Swedish hop (Humulus lupulus L.) yards from the 15th to 18th century, authored by Essi, Maria, Jenny and Matti is now accepted for publication in Economic Botany.

25 April

Matti and Jenny have been to the Nordic TAG meeting about theoretical archaeology. Matti talked about our work with potato onions and Jenny about some of the work with the historical seeds. More importantly we met many interesting new people and formed valuable new connections in addition to unexpected meetings with previous acquaintances.

17 April

Maria has received funding from Vitterhetsakademien from the Montelius' Memorial Fund and Gellerstedt's Ancient Monuments Fund. The money will be used to visit the Allaby lab for DNA extraction and for working with aDNA in the sterile facilities of IFM.

15 April

We have two bachelor students doing their degree projects with us this spring. Karin is looking into Nordic naked barley and Malin is developing barcoding markers to be used to determine the species on archaeological brassica seeds. Results from the lab are beginning to come in and we all cross our fingers for smooth work in the lab.

3 April

Still busy writing grant applications, but Matti's presentation at the 2012 conference in Copenhagen - Patterns of agricultural spread in Nordic landrace crops is now available in print.

31 March

We have been incredibly busy of late teaching, writing research grant applications and writing papers. The fruits of all this work will hopefully feature in future updates here. We are very happy to report, however, that the Engkvist foundation has granted us additional funding for the Canary barley project.

5 February

Maria has participated in the Linköping University high school outreach. This popular events draw crowds of high school students who are curious in learning more about life at university and the research that is being done at Linköping. With Maria, the students could try threshing different kinds of wheat and learn more about crop domestication.

23 January

We are very grateful to the Erik Philip-Sörensen Foundation which has graciously allowed us to redistribute the funding we received from them in late 2012. We will now be able to carry out our two pea projects, flowering time and nutrient content, to a high standard. We're really looking forward to bringing these to projects to the finish and publish them in suitable journals.

20 January

Matti and Jenny have both been to Gran Canaria and met with our collaborators Amelia del Carmen Rodrigues-Rodrigues and Jacob Morales-Mateos. Amelia and Jacob treated us to a splendid field day when we were shown old guanche silos from which we have seeds to do genetic analyses on. We also saw the laurel forest and had an excellent introduction to Canary cuisine. We're looking forward to continuing this collaboration during 2014.

3 January

It's a new year and we think it is one with potential. A new PhD student will begin, a new post doc will be joining us (more about that later) and we are waiting for decisions regarding several submitted manuscripts. It seems like it will be a year of writing too. Writing more manuscripts, writing applications and for Nils, writing a thesis. The photo shows Nils during his autumn trip to Robin Allaby's lab where he extracted DNA from archaeological barley remains. We will hopefully get some interesting results from that as well during 2014.

2013

5 December

Hugo has been back for a quick visit, doing DNA extractions, running PCRs and working on the first Rye paper. We also took the opportunity to have out yearly HSG Christmas table this week.

20 November

Last week we heard that the our collaborator Anna Palmé received funding from the Nilsson-Ehle foundation for our collaborative project on clover. We are very happy about this as it will allow us to extend the study and make it better suited to answer the questions we're interested in.

28 October

We were over the moon when we heard that the Berit Wallenberg foundation has decided to fund our application. This means that Maria can stay with the HSG, but now as a PhD student. We couldn't be happier.

11 October

9 October

Matti and Jenny have been to Cambridge and attended the meeting "Crop Breeding over 10,000 Years; Lessons for current and future challenges". It was a short meeting but Matti presented our wheat research and Jenny the grey pea results and both were happy to have the opportunities to chat with several of our collaborators as well as meet new people.

1 October

A new member, Tytti Vanhala, has joined the HSG to work with us for two months. Tytti will primarily be working on pea flowering time.

9 September

We just received the good news that our manuscript "Genetic diversity in local cultivars of garden pea (Pisum sativum L.) conserved 'on farm' and in historical collections", has been accepted for publication in Genetic Resources and Crop Evolution. In addition to Matti and Jenny, Lena Nygårds and Erik Boström are coauthors on the paper.

29 July

1 July

Jenny and Per have been to Tartu, Estonia and participated in the conference "Agricultural and rural life museums as conservers of rural heritage and their role in the development of international tourism". It has been a couple of days meeting lots of people from agricultural museums across the world, hearing many interesting talks and seeing new things. Jenny presented the pea research and Per talked about his work on scythe snaths.

22 June

Hugo has been to the 16th Conference of the International Workgroup for Palaeiethnobotany in Thessaloniki, Greece, where he presented the rye research he carried out while at Nordiska Museet and Linköping University.

20 June

Matti, Jenny and Nils have participated in the EUCARPIA meeting at Alnarp. Matti and Jenny presented HSG research with a poster each. There were many high-quality talks and interesting presentation and we made valuable new contacts within the field of Plant Genetic Resources.

23 May

All of us in Linköping are very sorry to see Hugo leave for Portugal. We are happy for him to be able to take up a position in his home town and we are very happy that he will continue to collaborate with the HSG. To see Hugo off properly we grabbed the last opportunity to serve him "surströmming" which he happily ate showing how well he has adapted to Swedish culture. Hugo was also presented with his very own straw goat to remind him of his work here in Sweden.

20 May

On the 15-16 May the Historic Seed Group had a small meeting at Julita attended by different HSG members as well as people from NordGen and the Swedish National Heritage Board. It was a very interested meeting where the participants found common ground over everything from hops and air onion to old barley varieties. Plans for future collaborations and new research projects are already under way. More photos from the meeting can be seen here.

30 April

Since the beginning of April the Historic Seed Group has been joined by two bachelor students who are doing their degree projects with us. Olof Rundquist is studying frost tolerance in wheat and Dan Gustafsson is looking at the Nud gene in Nordic barley. After three weeks of hard work in the lab Olof and Dan are ready to send their PCR products for sequencing and all fingers are crossed for interesting results.

25 April

The Historic Seed Group revived the old Roman tradition of celebrating Robigalia to make the rust gods happy and ask them to keep the rust away from the crops. Nils and Hugo prayed in latin, sacrificed a fox and read in the candy entrails that lab work for the coming year would be good. The rest of the HSG celebrated by eating assorted red candy.

10 April

Tomorrow, the 11th April Matti's book together with Lena Nygårds, "Klint Karins kålrot och Mor Kristins böna. Om Fröuppropets kulturarv", will be released. The book release will take place at Trädgårdsmässan (the garden fare) at Älvsjö at 10 o'clock.

4 April

Hugo has been to Madrid sampling the Ceres Hispanica collection, a collection of wheat ears assembled in 1818 and held at the Real Jardin Botanico. We hope DNA will be preserved enough to allow us to do genetic studies of the seeds.

26 March

Linnea's and Matti's paper is now available online and can be found here.

19 February

The NAM-B1 story continues. Linnea's and Matti's paper "Swedish Spring Wheat Varieties with the Rare High Grain Protein Allele of NAM-B1 Differ in Leaf Senescence and Grain Mineral Content" is now accepted for publication in PLoS One.

14 February

Jenny has now also held her "docent lecture" on the topic "Andra bullar - En evolutionär veteresa från forntid till nutid" (An evolutionary wheat-journey from past to present). The audience contained both people from within and outside of the biology section and the department. Final approval of Jenny's docentship will be taken on the 17th February.

18 January

Are you looking for a degree project (exjobb)? Check our project suggestions here or contact us directly on Jenny.Hagenblad "at" liu.se or Matti.Leino "at" nordiskamuseet.se.

11 January

Before Christmas Jenny participated in the Population Genetics Group conference in Glasgow where she presented the story on NAM-B1 so far and had time for some interesting discussions with old and new acquaintances.

2012

10 December

The paper about Swedish grey pea population genetics is now available as an advanced online publication and can be found here.

16 November

Martin Jones and Diane Lister from Cambridge have been over to visit us. We had a lovely sunny Thursday in Julita looking at the museum and of course the seed collection there. Friday was a bit greyer but after plenty of talks we are now up to date with each other's research. Hopefully the visit will be the beginning of many successful collaborations.

12 November

9 November

Matti has held his "docent lecture" on the topic "Lantsorter - genetisk resurs och historiskt dokument" (Landraces - genetic resource and historical document). A good turnout of interesting people both from within the department and other departments. We are now waiting for the final approval of Matti's docentship.

9 October

We are happy to report that the manuscript describing the population genetic study of Swedish grey pea, with Matti, Erik and Jenny as authors, has been accepted for publication in Heredity.

16 August

We have been very lucky to have had Jesper working with us over the summer. With a little more than a week left he is now preparing for a trip up to Trondheim to do the last experiments in the lab there. Jesper's bachelor degree project is now available to read here.

6 August

The NAM-B1 paper is now available as "Online First" and it can be found here.

15 July

We are very happy to announce that our paper Strong presence of the high grain protein content allele of NAM-B1 in Fennoscandian wheat has been accepted for publication in the journal Theoretical and Applied Genetics. The paper is a collaborative project with Jenny, Linnéa, Matti and the two French researchers from INRA Clairmont-Ferrand, Francois Balfourier and Catherine Ravel.

28 June

Jenny and Nils have been to the SMBE conference where Jenny presented a poster about the wheat research. We both got to know interesting new people and had a chance to reconnect with old acquaintances.

22 June

The people working in the lab got in the midsummer celebration mode while defrosting a freezer and this midsummer snowman was the result.

21 June

Essi got help from Matti and Per and has now started collecting hops plants for the next phase of the hops project.

18 June

Essi's and Jenny's Swedish paper together with Clas Tollin, Humulus lupulus in Sweden, is now published in Svensk Botanisk Tidskrift.

8 June

Kjersti has now finished her Master studies and will pursue a future career in Oslo where we wish her the best of luck. You can read Kjersti's report here.

1 June

A large part of HSG (Matti, Jenny, Linnea, Nils, Hugo and Maria) has been on a lab group retreat. We rented kayaks and paddled from Tyrislöt to Håskö and spent the night there before kayaking back. Good luck with the weather, a nice sauna on arrival and a very pleasant two days together. More photos can be found on the travel page.

30 May

We were very happy to hear that Hugo has been awarded a postdoc stipend from the Lawski Foundation. When his employment with Nordiska museet runs out he will be able to stay with the Historic Seed Group for at least another year.

21 May

Jenny has been to Stockholm and received her stipend from the king at the royal castle. It was a nice reception with interesting talks and a suitable level of formalness (and the wonderful smell of the flower decorations for the baptism of princess Estelle). The stipend will be used in research on peas and we are happy for the opportunity to further develop some of this work.

17 May

Hugo's paper on tetraploid wheat landraces in the Mediterranean Basin has been accepted and is now available here.

2 May

We were very proud to hear that Jenny has been awarded a stipend from the foundation King Carl XVI Gustaf's 50 year anniversary fund for her research on unknown genetic resources of Swedish landrace crop plants. The stipend will be awarded at the Royal Castle by HRH the King on the 21st of May.

We are also happy to announce that the Asplund et al paper about Rht8 allelic variation in wheats in the seed collection is now fully published and available here. Congratulations to Linnéa on her second paper from her Masters thesis project.

24 April

Matti, Essi and Jenny have been to the KSLA meeting on the diversity of livestock and crop plants. An interesting meeting where the participants ranged from scientists to farmers to representatives of the agricultural board and the plant and animal breeding companies. Just a pity there was not more time for talking to the other participants.

27 March

We were very happy to hear that the CF Lundströms foundation has granted us funding for our pea research. The money will make a welcome addition to pay for the pea project.

21 March

Matti and Jenny have been to Alnarp for the yearly POM meeting. A pleasant day with interesting talks by invited speakers and as always nice to hear how the other POM research projects are progressing and to get feedback on our own studies. Matti presented some results from the grey pea population studies that we are presently writing a scientific paper about and Jenny presented some of the flowering time results that were funded last year.

16 March

13 March

Jesper Fogelholm has started on a bachelor project with the HSG. Jesper will continue on Hanna Maja's work with the potato onions and genotype some additional onions from Finland and Georgia and some cultivars as well. Jesper has already done a good job on the DNA extractions and we are keeping our fingers crossed for equal success with the PCRs.

20 February

We have received the proofs for our Asplund et al paper on the Rht8 gene in historical wheats. As always it is nice to see how it will look with the professional lay-out. We'll go through it quickly and hopefully it will be available to others as well soon.

30 January

Just as winter finally kicks in with full strength Hugo Oliveira comes from Portugal to join us in the HSG. Hugo will be jointly affiliated with the Swedish Museum of Cultural History and Linköping University and he's now eagerly awaiting the germination of his rye seeds so that he can start his research. You can read more about Hugo on the members' page.

11 January

Jenny has been on a tour to the UK, first participating in the Population Genetics Group meeting in Nottingham. Jenny presented some of the results of our grey pea project and got lots of interested questions and a nice response to her talk. Afterwards she continued to Cambridge where she met up with people at the McDonald institute who work with related issues. A very nice visit making contacts with interesting people. Hopefully there will be opportunities to work together in the future.

1 January

Jenny has moved once again, this time to Linköping, so the HSG will from now on be a research group mainly located here. Nils will also move down to Linköping after the summer. After two interesting and exciting years it will be nice to have the whole team under one roof.

2011

26 December

On Christmas day (!) we had a nice Christmas present informing us that Linnéa's Matti's and Jenny's paper about the Rht8 gene in historical wheats was accepted in the Scientific World Journal's agronomy section. It is available in the in press section here.

14 December

Did you miss Matti on Kunskapskanalen talking about wheat domestication and HSGs research on the NAM-B1 gene? You can find it here on Ur play (in Swedish).

12 December

We are very happy to report that Hugo Oliveira will join the HSG in January as a Postdoc. Hugo did his PhD in archaeology on Mediterranean wheats and will now turn his attention to rye. Hugo visited Linköping a few weeks ago to have a look at the university and the Swedish Museum of Cultural history. We look forward to having him back soon.

1 December

Matti, Jenny, Essi and Hanna Maja all participated in a meeting around the potato onion project. It was a very nice day with lots of interesting stories about the potato onion in the past and in the present. Hanna Maja graciously agreed to illustrate the alleged dalecarian tradition of wearing potato onions in the hair.

24 November

Today at 16.25 Matti will be on Kunskapskanalen in a recording from his talk at the popular science week at Linköping University. If you miss it, keep an eye out for reruns. It is part of the program "UR Samtiden".

9 November

25 October

Since a few weeks back Maria Lundström has joined the HSG in Linköping and is now working on a research assistant. You can read more about Maria on the members page.

18 October

Matti has participated in popular science week at Linköping University. A large number of high-school students came and listened to his talk about the domestication of wheat. Swedish TV was also there to film the talk. We will of course announce here when it will be aired or becomes available on-line.

27 September

Jenny has participated in "Scientists at the library" and given a presentation about the HSG research to a small but very enthusiastic and interested audience.

12 September

Our manuscript with a population genetic study of landraces from the genebank and the seed collection, with Matti and Jennys (Hagenblad and Zie) has been accepted for publication in Genetic Resources and Crop Evolution.

26 August

Jenny and Matti have hosted a small meeting on the history and evolution of agriculture in the Nordic countries. Ten participants from as different disciplines as archaeology and evolutionary genetics met for a day and a half at the beautiful mountain hotel of Kongsvold in Norway. It was a very fruitful meeting and lots of new contacts were made and new ideas formed that will hopefully lead to successful research collaborations in the future. Thanks to the Letterstedt foundation for supporting this meeting and thanks to all participants for taking the time to come.

29 July

Sharmila finished her Masters thesis in June and it is now available among our publications.

20 July

Representatives of the Nordic Genetic Resource Center (NordGen) have visited the Agneta's pea cultivations. We hope to provide them with interesting research results soon.

23 June

Jenny and Matti have been visiting Agneta Börjesson who is test cultivating old landrace peas for us. Her cultivation will be part of both Kjersti's thesis project and the continuation of the grey pea project that is supported by POM (see below).

15 June

The Helge Ax:son Johnson Foundation has kindly decided to support Jenny's continued studies on the NAM-B1 gene in wheat.

15 May

Hanna Maja Tunset has joined us on a part-time basis and will help out with wheat genotyping and genotyping the potato onions on Essi's POM project. You can read more about Hanna Maja on the members page.

10 May

Jenny and Matti are planning to host a scientific meeting in August 2011. The topic of the meeting will be the history and evolution of Nordic crop species and we already have some interesting participants signed up for the meeting which will be held at Kongsvold Fjellstue, south of Trondheim.

13 April

Matti's book (in Swedish) about Oskar Sandahl, his journey to Egypt and the acacia seed that germinated has now been printed.

30 March

Louise, Frida and Sanna, the high school students that have been doing a project with the HSG have presented their project at the Young Researchers ("Unga Forskare") exhibition. They won and will participate in the finals in Stockholm in early April. We wish them the best of luck and will keep our fingers crossed. You can read more about the exhibition in Linköping here (in Swedish).

22 March

We have updated our list of suggestions for student degree projects. Please read more about them here.

8 March

Since a couple of weeks Kjersti Normann has started working on her masters degree project. Presently Kjersti are test cultivating peas and working on optimizing her PCR reactions. Hopefully everything will be running smoothly when the autumn semester comes when Kjersti will be working full time with the HSG.

2 March

Matti has published a small paper about Swedish oats and the rediscovered Atterberg type collection. It is published in the first issue of the year of Svensk Botanisk Tidskrift.

22 February

We are very happy to find out that the Swedish Board of Agriculture have decided to grant money from the POM research funds to both Jenny and Essi. We are happy that we will be able to continue our interesting work under POM, the Project for Cultivated Diversity studying peas and onions respectively.

21 February

Matti, Jenny and Essi have been to the POM meeting at Alnarp where Matti and Jenny presented preliminary results from our ongoing pea work. A nice little meeting which gave us opportunity to discuss different aspects of our research with each other and with others.

2010

26 November

Matti and Essi have been visiting in Trondheim. Matti gave a seminar about cultivation and exploration of cultivated plants where he presented some of the HSG research. We also had a lot of discussions about the status of our research projects and how to progress with the HSG research in spring.

3 November

In the beginning of next year we will be joined by a new student when Kjersti Normann will begin her Masters project with us. The majority of the project will, however be carried out from the autumn of 2011.

25 October

The three highschool students, Louise Dahlin, Frida Ulander and Sanna Renius are in their final year at the Berzelius school in Linköping. As their special project ("specialarbete") they are studying the flowering time gene LF in grey pea with the help of Matti. They look forward to presenting their project at the Young Researchers ("Unga Forskare") exhibition in the spring.

4 October

Matti was interviewed in the last issue of Science (1st October) in a report from the ISBA4 meeting. If you have access to Science you can read the report and see a photo of some of the seed jars here.

24 September

Jenny has participated in Researchers' Night at NTNU. 1200 high school students visited the university and could at HSG's stand try to thresh different kinds wheat to see the effects of the Q gene. More photos from the event can be seen here.

16 September

On her way home from Copenhagen Jenny stopped in Linköping for a week including two HSG days. One visit to the Swedish Museum of Cultural History and one day of DNA extraction at Linköping University.

8-10 September

Matti and Jenny have been to Copenhagen and the ISBA4 (4th International Symposium on Biomolecules in Archaeology). Jenny presented some of the barley research on a poster and Matti talked about the NAM-B1 in wheat. Again a lot of food for thought and several interesting new contacts were made.

30 August

A few weeks back the HSG welcomed a new masters student, Sharmila Madhavan, and she is now busy growing barley plants and extracting DNA. Sharmila is introduced on the members page.

18-19 August

Five members of the Historic Seed Group (Matti, Jenny, Linnéa, Nils and Erik) and one alumni member (Jenny Zie) met at the KSLAs localities of Enaforsholm for a very successful mini-conference. We had two very nice days with interesting talks, good food and a nice hike in the mountains in perfect sunny conditions. Well done Matti to already in June book such nice weather for the meeting. It was a very nice get-together that we hope we can turn into a yearly tradition. More photos from the meeting can be seen on the travel page.

13 July

Jenny has been to the SMBE conference in Lyon where she presented the results about population structure and flowering time genes in barley. An inspiring meeting giving a lot of food for thought and interesting new ideas.

17 June

Selçuk has now finished his masters thesis project and has started on his PhD position at the Swedish Agricultural University in Uppsala. We wish him the best of luck with his PhD studies.

3 June

Selçuk Aslan will present his masters thesis project on Monday the 7th June at IFM, Linköping University. The presentation will take place in room E324 at 10.30. You can download Selçuk's thesis from here.

26 May

The Historic Seed Group will have a get-together this autumn. We plan to meet at Enaforsholm in the middle of August for talks and social interactions.

26 April

Our Asplund, Hagenblad and Leino paper in Journal of Archaeological Science is now online here.

23 April

The peas that will be part of the new Grey Pea project have started germinating.

19 April

Erik Boström has joined the HSG as a research assistant. Erik will mainly be working in the lab on projects with pea and wheat.